Schuylkill considers touch-screen voting system

County will demonstrate system at four precincts.

October 10, 2002|By Gerry McClenahan Special to The Morning Call -- Freelance

Schuylkill County officials are considering a high-tech system that would simplify voting and tabulation.

On Wednesday, the county commissioners looked at touch-screen terminals that can hold all the ballots for the county's 167 precincts at once and easily transmit tabulation information.

The WinVote system was brought to the courthouse by Kimberly Shoup-Yeahl, sales manager for Advanced Voting Solutions of Orefield.

"It is a very easy-to-use and simple system," Shoup-Yeahl said. "It's also more versatile than paper ballots."

The county uses paper ballots, which are filled out by blacking in ovals -- much like standardized school tests. The county's 88,600 voters will again cast their votes by paper ballot on Election Day this year.

Four of the new machines will be set up in Pottsville and West Penn, Schuylkill and Butler townships on Nov. 5 for demonstration only, said Elizabeth Dries, the county's election bureau director.

Shoup-Yeahl noted several advantages to the system, including that voters can change their ballots at any time before sending them, and text on the screen can be enlarged or even heard through headphones for those with trouble seeing the ballots.

Because the system is wireless and equipped with a backup battery, a power outage would not affect functioning of the machines.

Dries said she likes the machines because they would improve the voting process and make her job easier.

"Accuracy and speed are what people want and this would increase both," she said.

Residents and groups such as the Concerned Citizens of Schuylkill County began pressuring officials to revamp the system after scanners that tabulate votes malfunctioned twice in 2001.

Ballots in the primary and general elections had to be recounted last year, delaying final results up to a week.

The WinVote system or a similar one may be what the county is looking for, officials said.

"I think it's really neat," said Port Carbon Councilwoman Marjorie McBreen, a voting reform proponent. "I'd like to see something like this here."

At 9 pounds, the touch-screen system is portable and comes in a case that opens to become a standing voting booth. The entire system can be carried in one hand and set up in less than five minutes, Shoup-Yeahl said.

The paper ballots are tallied by optical scanners and must be taken from each precinct to election headquarters in Saint Clair, where they are fed into machines to be counted.

The touch screens cost $2,995 each, making it unlikely county officials will set them up in all precincts yet.

"It could be done as a more gradual thing," Dries said. "We could do a few every year until we have converted to the new system."

Shoup-Yeahl conceded the machines can't yet be sold in Pennsylvania because they haven't been certified by the state Board of Elections.

"We hope to be certified by November or very soon thereafter," she said.